


Night In At The Idol's Apartment

by Gale_Breeze



Series: Into The Light [3]
Category: Splatoon
Genre: F/F, judd is lowkey eldritch horror, three is so so tired and will never stop you watch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-18 06:16:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20634470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gale_Breeze/pseuds/Gale_Breeze
Summary: Three wants to just pass out for like a week but she's an idiot who made promises so tonight she's spending time with Callie and Marie. Also Eight, but Eight is sort of transcending her mortal form from fangirling too hard.Look, she swears important stuff happens tonight.





	1. In Which Three Thinks Way Too Hard About Everything

Three flicked the pan in her hand, and took a moment to appreciate the muscle memory. It'd been a couple of years since she'd flipped a pancake like that, but she still knew how to do it. Just like riding a bike... Except Three had never owned a bike and therefore never knew how to ride one. In fact, she never knew what a normal bicycle was until she was ten, because she thought motorbikes were the only thing that the word 'bike' applied to.  
  
That metaphor is _terrible_.  
  
Anyways. She double-checked the other two pans. They seemed to be doing well enough, so Three left them alone for now. The last pan was an experiment for strawberry flavoured pancakes, and they weren't doing so good. They kept tasting just that little bit too strong, no matter what she did. Maybe she'd need to remake the batter or something... Hm. She would ask Eight if she liked it, but honestly after a week living with her, Three heavily suspected that Eight could eat actual garbage with a smile if it had a taste beyond cardboard.  
  
Her phone buzzed loudly. Ah, that was the timer. Three picked up pan number two, carefully separated it from the pan with a spatula, and laid it onto a plate. Just one or two more, and she could serve them all up. Three picked up the bowl and carefully tilted it until a steady stream poured into the hot pan. A satisfying _'Tssssss'_ hit her ears as she did. God, that noise was fucking delightful. She could listen to that all day... Actually, that sounded great. Might need to look up if there was a 24 hour loop of that noise on Huetube... Anyways. She was almost done.  
  
Three glanced at the clock. God, barely five in the morning. She didn't have work for another three hours, unfortunately. This was always the worst part of having a job. An actual job not working for a secretive organization to fight people, she meant. Like... Outside of listening to music and cooking, she didn't really... _Enjoy_ things. Not because things were bad, or dull. She just... Wasn't interested. Better things to do. Clean up. Keep in shape. Eat. Work. Sleep. What else was she meant to do, in these early hours of the morning? Paperwork, usually. But since she'd been on 'vacation' for the last few months, she had none to do.  
  
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the kitchenware. Her right eye was still vaguely green, and the skin where the goop had touched her was less stained than before, but it still looked... Not great. The doctor she and Eight had seen... Apparently getting the Inkaid into Eight's skin had healed the worst of her injuries, she'd make a full recovery. Three, on the other hand, having _completely_ ignored her horrifying eye injury for multiple days, had been told something fairly interesting...  
  
_"It's not an ink burn or an ink stain. Stains are usually caused by weapons such as Inkzookas and Blasters, and burns are achieved through Exploshers and Inktech malfunctions. Your skin doesn't feel overly dry and it's not stiff either. Inkling eye colours are connected to the Ink Sac, so there's no reason your system hasn't just immediately flushed it out. And while there's minor damage to your ears, the skin around it seems to be growing back at a decent pace. You say you don't feel nauseous or dizzy, and that you've kept active. The x-rays showed nothing internally wrong. To be honest, until the test results get back, I can't say that there's anything wrong with you. As far as all the tests so far show, you're a perfectly healthy young woman."_  
  
Perfectly healthy. Not _possible_. Literally, _not_ possible! The doc had to be wrong. _Had_ to be. Three wasn't healthy. _Couldn't_ be healthy. Hadn't been healthy in years. If she was healthy-- If she was healthy, then--  
  
_Stop._ Don't think about it. Focus.  
  
Three exhaled deeply. She was thinking too much about work right now. Things that didn't matter. <strike>_(mattered too much couldnt cope couldnt breath need to focus focus focus)_</strike> So she drowned the last few thoughts down to the blackest, most unseeable depths she could, and focused on the pancakes in front of her. No matter what she did, they'd stay pancakes. The ingredients list wouldn't change, and the food itself couldn't hurt her. Let's see... OneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSeven, OneTwoThreeFour... Last three. The strawberry pancakes... She flipped that one straight onto a plate before ripping a chunk off to try.  
  
_Blegh_. Still too sweet. Egh... Fuck. Total failure. Guess she'd try those another day. Oh well. Might as well chow down on it so nobody ever knew that the sin against cooking existed. Nom. Oh, fuck. Way too sweet. Holy shit, why did she eat the entire thing in one gulp?! Mmrrmgm! Oh god, she was gonna die of a sweetness overload in her own fucking kitchen like a shithead. "This bitch looks like a fuckface," one detective will say, no pity for the bloated corpse beneath their feet. "Better toss that stupid shit into the incinerator! Make sure nobody sees their idiocy up close!" But the crime scene photos will exist. Forever. In an evidence box, years down the line, where interns will look at old case notes of respected law enforcement.  
  
For the sake of her pride, Three _refused_ to die.  
  
After recovering from the potential future crime scene, Three immediately pulled all the pancakes off the stove and quickly rinsed all the pans and bowls of leftover pancake residue. Yes, it was delicious. It also stuck like a _motherfucker_ and refused to budge if left to cool, so getting rid of it fast was important. Once that was done, she inspected each stack. Seven for Three and seven for Eight. Now, Three was a dumb bitch. She could cope without pancake toppings. However, Eight was a lady of _culture_. Which required better treatment, you understand.  
  
Thus. Three was breaking out the good shit. The holy marriage of breakfasts... Whipped cream and maple syrup. Three pulled the bottle out, and slowly slathered Eight's stack in maple syrup, hitting that perfect sweetspot in the center where the pancake dipped, just slightly, allowing the syrup to pool for a moment before spilling outwards and running down the sides. And then on top of that, adding the whipped cream as a metaphorical crown. And just as the finishing touch... Three pulled one last strawberry from the box, carefully cut away the leaves, and rested it right on top of the cream like a crown jewel.  
  
_Beautiful._  
  
She placed a knife and fork on both plates, and picked both of them up. Carefully, she navigated her way to her bedroom, where Eight was lying on the nest mat, legs stretched out in the sunlight as she stared at her 3DS. That was. _Yeah._ She was. That could be fine. Legs. Fucking hell goddamn it. _FOCUS._ "Stupid jerkface brat, let me GO, I don't CARE about your stupid festival, it sucks, I hate it, shut up shut up shut up let me go back to playing my game..." If nothing else, time on the Surface had taught Eight the ability to get infuriated with general bullshit. "Shut up Sophoclutz. Whatever your name is. I already forgot your name. What was it again? Who knows. Jerk. Stupid."  
  
"Insulting a videogame? You've truly grown as a person," Three snarked. Eight's head snapped to look at Three, and then snapped to the piles of pancakes. "Made breakfast."  
  
Eight looked at Three and sat up. She put her 3DS down and clapped delightedly. She seemed to be drooling slightly. "Pancakes? Pancaaaaakes."  
  
Three carefully handed her one of the plates before sitting down on the nest mat next to her. She watched, semi-fascinated, as Eight ruthlessly butchered and destroyed the meal before her. A vicious monstrosity tearing apart lesser beings, indulging in its base lust to consume and destroy. "Whipped cream and maple syrup as the toppings, and I made sure that they cooked all the way through. If they're not okay, then--"  
  
"Why do I have whipped cream and you don't?" Eight asked, piercing right through Three's words. She looked vaguely upset about it.  
  
Well. There was a reason. "Ehhh... I mean. Not really about that? I don't like it much." That was a lie, Three liked maple syrup and whipped cream. But, and here was the crucial point, Three believed in eating those as their own foodstuffs. Yes, this meant at one point in her life Three had downed half a bottle of maple syrup on its own and then spent roughly a day or two passed out on the floor from a sugar rush-slash-crash _why do you ask?_ "Like. I'm not opposed to it? I just like stuff on its own. I'm the sort of person that unironically orders plain cheese pizzas with no toppings just because I like cheese pizzas."  
  
A vaguely unsettled look crossed Eight's face. Uh oh. She was about to make a bad decision. She looked up, and a steely glint entered her pale white eyes. "It's not fair if only I have some. You should have some as well." Something told Three this was not an argument she could win, but had to futilely fight against anyways. "Eat."  
  
"No. Those are your pancakes. Seven each."  
  
"Then I'll just take one of yours!" The logic Eight had was damnably dangerous. Faster than Three could possibly react, Eight ripped one of Three's plain pancakes from her plate and practically swallowed it whole. Somebody who just ate a pancake like that had no damn right to look so goddamn smug. "There. Now you can have one of mine." The smile on Eight's face was not kind. It was the sort of smile one used when picking the wings off of flies. The sort of smile one used by interfering young ladies. Three sort of hated it. But not really.  
  
With a great huff, Three moved to take the least topping-covered pancake. Eight silently ate that one and gave Three a judgemental look. "Really?" Eight nodded. "Fucking fine." She stabbed, violently, a pancake with bits of whipped cream and syrup on it and transferred it over to her own plate. It... It tasted fine. Alright. Not awful.  
  
Eight gasped dramatically. "Three _likes_ something?! Oh, I have to tell the press immediately!" She giggled lightly, and the sound was. Y'know. It was. A thing. _Interesting_. Shut up. "See? It wasn't awful, was it?"  
  
"... No," Three grumbled.  
  
Eight smiled and dug back into her pancakes. "Thank you for making me breakfast, Three!"  
  
"Eh. No problem. Might need to branch out eventually. Callie keeps harping on me to make something healthy for you, the hypocrite." Callie ate nothing but marshmallow cereal for breakfast, so she was not allowed to bitch at Three at all. Marie was a mystery. Nobody knew what Marie had for breakfast. Somedays, Three had mild breakdowns where she wondered if Marie woke up and simply had no breakfast. "No idea what to do for that, aside from making smoothies."  
  
"Oh! Smoothies?! Like the ones Marina got me the other day? Yes! I want those, can we have those?!" Well... It was possible to do. But on the other hand...  
  
"You, uh. Do know it involves blenders, right?" That Eight had nearly been killed by a blender was left unsaid.  
  
Eight nodded. "Yeah, I know. But I have to get over trauma sometime, right?"  
  
... "Not necessarily. It's alright to be afraid of things."  
  
"I was barely in the blender for like, ten whole seconds before you broke me out," Eight disagreed. Her response was almost immediate, and much more mature than Three would've thought. "And to be honest, I like smoothies more than I'm afraid of blenders."  
  
Three sighed and took a bite of her pancakes. "... Milkshakes are better than smoothies."  
  
Eight hummed and devoured another poor pancake that had never done anything to anyone. "Hm. Hm. _No,_ smoothies are much better. You're a fool."  
  
"I am a fool, but I'm not wrong," Three argued as she ate another pancake. A plain pancake.  
  
"You sort of are."  
  
"I'm sort of not."  
  
"Nneeeeeh, you sort of are." This continued on for some time.  
  
After a while, Eight finished off her stack of pancakes, and then spent the next minute or so obsessively licking the remaining crumbs, bits of cream and drops of syrup off the plate with her tongue. Three spent the next minute or so pointedly not looking at her because. It. Raesons. _Rosaens._ **REASONS.** FUCKING HELL THREE. USE WORDS RIGHT. HOLY SHIT. "S-So I wanted to talk with you before I went off to work this morning!" Three half-said half-screamed.  
  
"Oh? What about?" Eight asked as she put down her plate. Her attention was redirected back to her 3DS, where she frustratedly resumed mashing the A button. "Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. I hate you. Go away. Nobody cares. Go away. I want my Pokeymans. Shut up. Give me back my game you thief." Truly, Eight was a paragon of the gaming mind. She pointedly turned the screen towards Three and mashed the button repeatedly, presumably to illustrate how annoyed she was.  
  
Hehe. "Well, I'm headed back to work today... Pearl and Ida don't get off work until roughly ten... Callie and Marie are busy sorting out their new independent song career on top of their TV appearances, Four works all day nearly every day, and I don't think you want to hang out in the Squidbeak Splatoon HQ with Octavio all day."  
  
"Ugh. No. Don't even say that jerk's name to me."  
  
"In any case, today's gonna be the first day since you arrived on the Surface where you're gonna be alone for a bit... Is that okay?" Now, Three wasn't trying to cast abandonment issues or fear of loneliness onto Eight, because. Three didn't like those insults. And no other reasons. Shut up. But she felt like she had to ask. Almost every second Eight had spent on the Surface had been in the presence of at least one person she knew and trusted... And today would be the first time, even if it was only for two hours or so, that she'd be alone. "Like, if it's not--"  
  
Eight nodded slowly, more to herself than to Three. "It's fine. I mean, it'd be rude if I asked you to babysit me every day. Besides, I want to... Talk to Kyrie again." This was said with no small amount of malice. Something pleasant tingled down Three's back at the sound of it. "And even if I didn't want to go Splattling--"  
  
"Splattling?" Three asked at the bizarre word.  
  
"Splat Battling, it's an abbreviation? All the cool kids say it," said Eight confidently.  
  
"I have never once heard anybody say Splattling."  
  
"Are you cool, Three?"  
  
"Oof. Oh no. Ouch. My pride. It _stings_. Why must you hurt me so."  
  
"Heehee! My plan to destroy the Squidbeak Splatoon has begun! By eroding your pride, I shall wear away at the foundation that opposes the Octarian nation! Mwahaha!"  
  
"Fiend. I shall stop you." Three issued the lightest and least damaging slap of all time to Eight's shoulder.  
  
"Unbelieveable, I can't believe you hurt me like this!" Eight fake-sobbed. They both stopped and looked at each other for a moment before breaking down into giggles. "Back on track, even if I didn't want to go Splattling..." She looked at Three semi-seriously, as though Three were about to laugh at the totally fake made-up word.  
  
Three shrugged. "I won't laugh."  
  
"Sure, whatever you say. Even if, I still have stuff to do. Like hunting for the Oran plushies!" Oh _god_, not this again. Oran and Bloo were mascots for Splat Battles, generic Inklings with orange and blue ink to represent weapons in ads and commercials. Eight was, for some reason, obsessed with Oran. She'd already found a plushie from the 90s that could only be described as Anime Girl Incarnate and refused to let go of it. "And there's anime I can watch on my laptop, too! Plus I have my 3DS, so I can play Pokemon. So don't worry about me! I mean it!"  
  
... Yeah, okay. That made some amount of sense. Three sighed and leaned back onto the nest mat. God, going back to sleep felt like a great idea, but Gill would actually kill her if she was late. "Yeah, okay... Oh yeah. Marie called me earlier. She and Callie are up to having that sleepover today." It was a real good decision to plug her ears as Eight started to squeal excitedly. It was less like a noise made by mortals, and more like a screech from the pits below the world. "Sometime around seven, if that's okay with you?"  
  
"YES," Eight stated firmly. Good to know Eight was still obsessing over pop music. "What are they like? What sort of foods do they eat? Should I bring a gift? I should totally bring a gift. I'm gonna get to properly meet the Squid Sisters!"  
  
"Trust me, the appeal runs out real fast." Three had once made the titantic mistake of letting them know that she was a _person_ rather than an automaton with no emotions. Ever since, they haunted the cafes she liked and shackled themselves to Three with chains of 'Friendship'. The first few months she'd known them, Three had tried - somewhat desperately - to break those chains. It had been... An experience. Like trying to pull back against the hounds of hell, it was futile, but in a way that gave you hope of escaping the torment. "Also, you can totally bribe them with sushi." The only defense, other than throwing another poor soul to their doom.  
  
"Sushi? Really?" Eight narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "I see..._ Hmmmhmhmhmhmhmmmmm_..."  
  
"For real though, just get them whatever."  
  
A mortified gasp was shot at Three. "I can't do that! They're the _Squid Sisters!_ They sang _Calamari Inkantation!_ I can't just get them _anything!"_  
  
"You know they're not actually sisters, right?" The way Eight froze indicated many things. Perhaps her mind had broken. Perhaps her blood had simply ceased to flow in her veins. Perhaps her soul was being dragged through a meatgrinder. There were a lot of options here.  
  
Eight, still as stone, spoke numbly. No emotion, yet with an undercurrent of 'Holy Shit What' to it. "W... What? What are you saying to me? I don't understand." Unstable was the best way to describe her voice. "You're _lying_. You _have_ to be."  
  
Three decided to explain before Eight slit her throat in the middle of the night for daring to interfere in her Squid Sister fantasies. "They're cousins, supposedly. But from what I've heard, they basically grew up next door to each other, so there's no difference from being sisters." Thankfully, this explanation seemed to mollify Eight. There was a pause as Eight continued to think about the meeting later today, while Three stared around the room. Eight had only been in her apartment for a week, but already, the room seemed so much lived in for her presence.  
  
In the early morning, the Squidmas lights hunt on the ceiling flickered just enough to give the room a faint glow. A wardrobe to hold Eight's clothes had appeared in the corner of the room, though various boots and shirts flowed out of it like frozen water. A weapons wall, made of bamboo and mesh, holding several new weapons, rested next to the commercial brand wall Three herself had bought. Three's bed was gone, replaced with the nest mat. The thing was covered in blankets and pillows, a sort of comfort Three hadn't felt in years.  
  
Three's side of the mat was barren. One plush, one blanket, one pillow. But several pillows, of various patterns and hues, had started to migrate over from Eight's side. Her side of the mat was like a lush paradise of light and colour, covered in at least six or seven blankets, nine quilts, ten pillows and a mountain of plushes. How Eight could sleep with so many eyes on her, Three had no idea. So many empty, soulless, plushie eyes. It sort of looked like flowers in a coffin, but with plushies instead of flowers.  
  
Three would go to that funeral.  
  
She glanced at the clock. Fuuuuuuuck! It was STILL FIVE O'CLOCK. Five-fifty. Whatever. GOD. FUCKING PROGRESSION OF _TIME_ HOW DOES IT _WOOOOORK._ FUCK YOU GOD OF TIME. WHATEVER YOUR NAME WAS. THREE WASN'T GONNA GO LOOK IT UP CAUSE THAT FUCKER DIDN'T DESERVE IT.  
  
It was entirely possible Three needed more coffee.  
  
Three was deep, deep into her thoughts about how time was an illusion and they were all doomed to the harrowing ordeal that was their inevitable demise against the slow march of time when Eight threw a 3DS at her. "Hey! I just remembered, you promised to trade with me!" She did? Three did not remember agreeing to this. Granted, Three did not remember much of anything this early in the morning except for her hatred of concepts like time, and how she'd really like it to speed up so she could go to work because she was possibly addicted to keeping herself busy. "Get to it! Begin your Pokemon adventure at once, darn you!"  
  
... Three stared at the item that now sat on her chest. Idly, she picked it up and inspected it. She knew that technology had improved over the years, but... Damn. Two screens, huh? It... Probably said something about her that the last handheld she'd played was a Gameboy SP. Pokemon Sapphire had been super fun. Way better than Ruby. Lameass red thing. After a moment, Three located the on button. Which was another weird thing - wasn't that meant to be a switch? And did this have a game in it? It didn't go on the bottom. There was a slot bit at the top, with something already inserted. "Whatever this game is, it will never beat Pokemon Sapphire in terms of quality."  
  
See, Three didn't know a lot about Pokemon. Didn't remember much. But y'know what she DID remember? MOTHERFUCKING BRELOOM. The Best Pokemon. That's not even an opinion. Not _even_. An _opinion_. That's a fact. You can lie to yourself about anything you like, but you take one goddamn look at Breloom and you UNDERSTAND. THE MOTHERFUCKING _TRUTH_. OF THIS GODDAMNED SHITHEAP OF A WORLD. AND IT IS THAT ALL OF CIVILIZATION EXISTED _SOLELY_ TO CREATE _BRELOOM_.  
  
Yeah, she needed more coffee to dull that dramatic part of her into unconsciousness.  
  
"... What game is this?"  
  
"That one is Ultra Moon. I have Ultra Sun. Come on, plaaaaaay!"  
  
"... Fine." She did agree to trade, after all. And she had a few hours to waste before she had to go to work anyways. She ended up picking Popplio, because Rowlet and Litten both suck, they do, your arguments are invalid.

  
\---

  
She ended up being an hour late to work.  
  
She decided the way Eight smiled made it worth it. At least for the one hour she was late, before her coworkers started bugging her about it.

  
\---

  
So by the time Three ended up getting home, showering so that Marie didn't start crawling up her ass about how Three smelled like she never showered, making a breadball snack - take six pieces of bread, rip off the crusts, roll up all bits of bread until they form a tight sphere in your hand, eat plain - and texting them to say that they were still coming for real, it was roughly about ten past seven by the time that Three and Eight ended up inside a train running towards Strawberry Street. God, Three did not remember life being this stressful.  
  
Fucking karma, biting her in the ass for... Something. Nothing recent she could think of.  
  
"What's their home like?" Eight asked, eyes focused on the passing scenery. It was in one of the fancier areas in town, lots of trees and parks. Ever since their TV and movie careers had picked up, Callie and Marie had moved from their midcity apartment to one in Flounder Heights. It meant that now, rather than a cramped one-bathroom apartment, the two of them now had a huge apartment the size of a small house. The sort of apartment you saw in movies and TV shows where it's pointlessly huge and you think not even the most behemoth monstrosities of the black pit could make use of all the space.  
  
They had _that_ kind of apartment.  
  
Also, to like. Rant about Flounder Heights for a moment? FUCK Flounder Heights. It was populated almost entirely by asshole soccer moms and vegans who looked down on you for also not being a vegan and shitheads who protested political stances at little league games. The like, five percent that wasn't that was almost entirely people Three tolerated. Three made sure to say that out loud, just to offend anybody on this train that was from Flounder Heights. "Messy as fuck."  
  
One time Three had cleaned that apartment just to see if the floor even existed there. The next morning, a small mess had congregated in a perfect circle around the door. Like something was _threatening_ her. She'd bought her own apartment the day after. Possibly, it was sentient, like Judd.  
  
Speaking of... Three was reminded that they'd be meeting Judd. A creation of the Professor, and Eight had been attacked by another creation of the Professor... That would be interesting. Also _disturbing_ because literally anything to do with Judd was fucking _SCARY_ how could anyone _stand to be in the same room as him holy fuck._ "Ew. I hate mess."  
  
"Why you want to go is a mystery, then. The apartment, not to mention Callie and Marie, are just total messes all around."  
  
"I tolerate you, don't I?"  
  
The tiny part of Three's brain that she didn't like to think about screamed in disbelief. HOLY SHIT, it screamed wildly. FUCKING DEMOLISHED! BURNED AS FUCK! SEE THOSE CINDERS? THAT'S OUR FUCKING EGO! GODDAMN THIS BITCH IS AWESOME! Three ruthlessly subdued and stabbed this part of her brain until it ceased to be forever. "... Touche," Three replied slowly, trying not to react too visibly. The smile Eight had suggested Three hadn't been entirely successful.  
  
She twisted in her seat to look Three in the eye. "... Hey. Can I tell you something?"  
  
"Shoot."  
  
"Are they actually going to like me?"  
  
Three looked at Eight. Looked at the hidden muscle beneath the cutesy fashion, and the love of combat, and the razor-sharp eye for details. Three looked at Eight, and wondered why the girls hadn't kidnapped her sooner. "They're going to fucking adore you. Maybe a little too much." Eight and Callie were going to get along so fucking much, it wasn't even funny. It would be a miracle if Three left that building with her sanity intact. She probably wouldn't, but given how much shit Three let Callie and Marie get away with there was never any chance of that anyway. "Last chance to run."  
  
A sharp look entered Eight's eye. "Why would I run?"  
  
That, Three sighed to herself, was a bundle of personal issues that would never ever be uncovered. Ever. Not in a billion years. "I made the mistake of letting them know I was an actual person and not a machine to splat Octarians and now they've sunk their claws into me so deep it'll kill me to pull away." Only possibly a little exaggeration. Callie was possibly a witch who knew real magic and Marie was definitely a woman with access to an information network for revenge. There was no backing out.  
  
The train - one of the fancier, cleaner and more 'modern' styles of traincar - slowed to a halt. The announcer gurgled something out about Flounder Heights, and the second the doors opened Eight was gone. Great. Three groaned and pushed herself up before wandering off the train. Fucking goddamn it, she forgot how much she hated walking around in Flounder Heights.  
  
It was too clean. Too... Nice. There's no grit to it. It's like a still shot from an anime, you know? She fucking hated it. Why Callie and Marie chose to live out here was beyond her. She spied Eight leaning against the entrance of the station, pointedly looking away from the train. Even if she could use them, the things still freaked her the fuck out. Three walked - not ambled, as Eight would later accuse her of, because only _losers_ ambled - over to a vending machine and bought two cans of soft drink. Some cheap brand nobody has ever heard of.  
  
She handed one to Eight, and they head off. "Thanks." Eight took a sip, and then promptly spits it out. "BLUH! What is this?!" Well, the label called it Bubblefruit. Three watched Eight pour the concoction out into some grass, idly noting the off-blue colour. Three cracked her can open and tasted it. She let the taste roll around her mouth on her tongue, took in the subtle flavouring, the acidity of the drink. Then, after a solid minute, she swallowed.  
  
"This tastes like Octavio looks."  
  
"Like the pinnacle of physical prowess?" Eight asked, seemingly without sarcasm, and WOW did that explain a lot about Octarian culture if that was true.  
  
"Like an old man who took seventeen Hero Roller hits to the face and asked for more." It'd been something like twenty. Octavio was fucking weird, man. Also sort of... Um... Yeah, Three wasn't gonna voice _that_ one, even in her thoughts. All you fuckers judge her all the time, so that thought was gonna stay fucking locked inside her soul forever.  
  
They walked for a while. Flounder Heights wasn't like Navy Port or the major shopping areas. It was like a million canyons made of apartment buildings, there's not really any way to tell if you're where you need to be except with a GPS. How anybody lived here, she had no idea. "Are we lost?"  
  
"No. Sadly."  
  
They turn another corner.  
  
"It's alright to admit if you're lost."  
  
"I'm not lost."  
  
"You super are."  
  
"I'm not!"  
  
It took them a full five, six minutes, to reach the apartment building that Callie and Marie lived in. It had no name that Three was aware of. It looked like an asshole building. Imagine the fanciest apartment building you've ever seen, and then make it look fancier. Looked sort of Coron-ish or whatever. Lots of flourishes. Okay... "Which one do they live in?" They walked in the front door, ignored the broken elevator (seriously, why have one if you never repair it?) and headed up the first set of stairs.  
  
Three sighed. "One-Oh-Two." Just like them to get an apartment with both their Agent numbers... "They're both assholes like that." It didn't dawn on Three at all that Eight was not privy to her private thoughts, and as such had no idea why Three called the Squid Sisters assholes.  
  
A voice - a terrifying voice - suddenly sounded from behind them. "You think we're assholes?" OH SHIT. The door to the apartment suddenly pulled open - by Marie shit shit _shit SHIT THIS WAS A SETUP NO_ \- and Three felt an arm secure itself around her neck. Fuck. FUCK. ARMLOCK. NO NO NO NO NO! "We should correct you. Come on in."  
  
Fear. Sudden, overwhelming fear. "I don't want to," Three said, right before Eight squealed and dragged her inside. The smirk on Marie's face indicated that making Eight do that was part of the plan. "I'm going to kill both of you and then myself. _I'm going to kill both of you and then myself. I'm going to kill both of you and then myself._"  
  
A carefree snort-giggle erupted from Marie's mouth. "Oh, sure you are. _Suuuure_ you are. Just like the _last_ time you visited. And the time before that, and the time before that."  
  
"Fuck you. My threats are genuine."  
  
"Genuinely heartfelt?" Callie inquired, locking the door and preventing their escape.  
  
"No. Genuinely hatefelt."  
  
"Hate is just advanced anger," Callie replied. "You should do some stress relief."  
  
"Do you have a Shooter I can use?" Three grumbled.  
  
Eight, seemingly not listening as she bathed in the feeling of being in the same building as her idols, absently pulled an Aerospray from her ID Mass and handed it to Three. It had a fully loaded canister, so there was definitely enough ammo to splat one of them.  
  
Marie stared. "Huh. That's. Hey, Eight? Do you just. Carry that?"  
  
"I keep at least five weapons on me at all times." She paused before throwing Three away and rushing up to look at Marie. "OH MY GOD! UH! ZUH! MMMM! HI!" The girl was practically vibrating into another realm of consciousness as she realized that she was speaking to Marie.  
  
Oh, this was going to be a positively delightful evening, Three thought sarcastically.  
  
Marie scowled. "NO BROODING, BITCH!"  
  
"FUCK YOU I'LL BROOD IF I WANT TO!"

  
\---

  
To explain what Callie and Marie's apartment looked like, Three had to go on a lengthy metaphoric ramble for a while.  
  
Imagine for a moment that you can see the growth of a world. You watch in blissful awe as you see grass grow, trees arise from the dirt, watch as tiny mounds of dirt slowly grow into mountains, as rivers erode rock away into canyons, the evolution of animals into a civilization. Imagine, for a moment, you see all of this proceed at high speed, but not too high, like a sped-up video of a building being made. And then, before you know it, it's all going wrong. The mountains are crumbling into landslides, the canyons are taller than any creature can fathom, there are strange fruits and plants growing that you have never seen before, like the world has just decided to mutate so wildly out of control that there is nothing, not in the real world or in fiction, that you could compare it to.  
  
This, Three would assure anyone who asked, was the only way to describe what the two idols had done to this poor fucking apartment. Ages ago, when Three first helped them move in, the apartment had looked nice. There was some fuzzy green carpet, clean white walls, lots of space to walk around in. The sort of nice place young couples thought was trendy, and chic.  
  
And then, like a bomb going off, the idols had moved in. Immediately, they filled the kitchen cupboards with mugs and swirly straws and paper plates. Immediately, they shoved four sofas and a kotatsu into the living room. Immediately, the bedrooms were filled with empty wardrobes and clothing racks. Immediately, the bathroom was filled with enough tentacle conditioner and fancy soaps than any mortal could count. And lo, did the apartment fill with discarded clothing and rubbish. And lo, did the array of random gadgets and knicknacks flood through the hall. To drop the drama, it was a fucking mess.  
  
"Welcome to our home!" Callie said to Eight, showing her around. Eight, practically dying of nirvana, drank in every little word. "Now, I know we haven't been properly introduced, but I'm--"  
  
"CALLIE CUTTLEFISH!" Eight squealed, almost exploding from the amount of energy inside her body. All her tentacles were flicking about wildly, while her pale white eyes were moments away from falling right out of her face. It was... Interesting. Her head swiveled - not turned swiftly, but _literally twisted_ on the base of her neck - towards Marie. The effect was highly disturbing and unnatural. It somehow fit Eight like a glove. "AND MARIE CUTTLEFISH! oh my god i'm in their home OH MY GOD I, I," And here Eight paused to hyperventilate for a moment.  
  
Callie gave a weak smile as she rubbed Eight's back. "Take your time. You've got us all night, okay?" That was Callie-ese for 'Please stop your freakout before it exceeds my understanding of the situation'. The last time she'd said that was with Three, though this was an understandably happier circumstance. She guided Eight over to the kotatsu. "Seriously, it's okay. We're not that cool."  
  
"Callie The Liar," Three replied on sheer reflex. Fuck.  
  
Marie nodded. "Yeah, Cal. We're the coolest." She struck a casual pose, a Midair Lean combined with an Arm Fold. The sort of thing that you didn't have to explicitly practice, but still required a modicum of expertise to pull off. "Also Three, you called Callie a liar so you think we're cool. I recorded that entirely." Fuck fuck fuck fuuuuuck.  
  
A wild grin crossed Callie's face. "Oooh, blackmail!"  
  
"Try it. We don't have any common friends for you to blackmail me with." Three, possibly on accident and possibly entirely definitely on purpose, knew nobody that Callie or Marie associated with on the regular. Except Spike, but _everybody_ knew who Spike was. That dude was crazy.  
  
Marie smiled. "I will give it to Fyra so she can mock you." ... Fyra...? Who was... OH. AGENT FOUR. SHIT. SHE FORGOT THAT FOUR ACTUALLY HAD AN IDENTITY OUTSIDE OF AGENT WORK. FUCK. SHIT. GODDAMN IT. "Anyway, while you're freaking out over that. Hey there, Eight. Nice to meet you." She held her hand out, and then regretted it as Eight squeezed her hand tight enough to cut off circulation. Sometimes Three felt that Marie forgot that Octolings were six or seven feet of pure muscle.  
  
Callie smiled brightly. "So hey, we have loads of stuff to talk with ya about tonight! It'll be rad! Oh, and we have snacks!" Oh, they did. Three had gotten the alert on the phone from every single bit of social media Callie was attached to. Some dozen insta pics tagged with a billion things about the preparations for tonight. "Come on, sit down at the kotatsu! I think that's where Judd is anyways. He loves warm stuff."  
  
Oh shit. "Wait, Judd is here? Now?" Three asked nervously.  
  
"Of course I am." FUCK. From the exact corner of Three's vision that made it scary as possible, Judd emerged from under the blanket of the kotatsu, golden eyes and all, in the exact area that made the shadows play across its face. Fucking bastard. "Did you think I would be missing this date, Agent?"_ Fucking shit goddamn it thought she had more time fucking goddamn son of a reelnecked clamfisher._  
  
Eight's eyes went wide. "Fluh... Fluff. Floof."  
  
Marie grinned. "Yeah, Judd is super fluff. He's like, thirty percent fluff thirty percent fat forty percent cat. It's adorable."  
  
Judd twitched an eyebrow on its weirdly Inkling-like - or human-like, if you took its origins into account - face. "I am only such due to the fish you continue to feed me, Agent." Judd was fucking weird. He only referred to people by titles, and usually in a way that sounded insulting. Then there was his creepy voice. Not that there was anything... Wrong with it. It was just the sort of voice that you couldn't describe in any way except giving a name, you know? Nothing else to compare it to. "And I am not fluffy. How dare you."  
  
A slightly mocking giggle escaped Callie. It was probably growing up with the thing, but neither Callie or Marie were freaked out by Judd. Frankly, Three hated the fucking thing, and not in her usual way that involved insults and anger, but like. She actually wanted to get away from it? And not exist near it. "Aw, don't worry Eight. Judd is super nice! Go on, get closer!" Oh god. Eight crept closer, and Judd proceeded to stay totally and utterly still.  
  
Slowly, Eight moved across the room and knelt down next to Judd. Judd hummed. "So. An Octarian?" it murmured, in that ever-so-still voice. "I remember the Agents bringing the other one to me. But you are... Different. The eyes." Judd held out one of its paws and rested it on Eight's leg. Eight looked like she'd just been blessed by a saint.  
  
"M-My name is Eight."  
  
Judd made a faint purring noise. It was fucking TERRIFYING. "I see..." Did it? DID IT SEE? CAUSE THREE DIDN'T. "... Haaah. Very well, then." And then the thing curled up in Eight's lap _god why did it DO these things?!_  
  
Marie snorted. "Fucking drama queen. Judd just has to make everything dramatic, doesn't he?" She wandered over and grabbed Eight's wrist. "Here. Lemme show you how to pet him." Eight made a noise that transcended mortal comprehension.  
  
"Aight! Three, sit yo butt down," Callie demanded.  
  
"Absolutely not. I refuse." Three sometimes forgot she existed for a reason beyond antagonizing Callie.  
  
"Did I fucking stutter?" Callie asked calmly as she walked into the kitchen.  
  
"Sitting my butt down." Now, Three could have moved to join Marie and Eight under the kotatsu. Could have. Except that she was tired and also Callie was a buttface. So she collapsed onto a sofa instead, making sure to land butt first.  
  
Marie snickered. "Just like old times. Me with Judd, Callie doing weird shit in the kitchen--"  
  
"I don't do weird shit in the kitchen!" Callie yelled.  
  
"--And you, passed out on our sofa."  
  
"Good. The old times were better. There were fewer people to annoy me all day." Two years ago, it'd just been Callie and Marie. Now it was them, Marina and Pearl, Granny, Zoey and Mable, Four, all of Four's dumbass Ranker friends... Oh no. Oh _god_. Oh _shit_. Three actually had a fucking _social circle_ now, didn't she? "Kill me. Immediately. Shoot me to death."  
  
"Nah. Your suffering maintains me."  
  
"Hate."  
  
"Hate is just advanced anger!" Callie yelled.  
  
"HOW ABOUT I _ADVANCE KICK YOUR ASS?!"_  
  
"TRY IT BITCH!"  
  
"Just like old times," Marie said happily as Callie stormed out of the kitchen with arms full of junk food, and as Three pushed herself up to yell back at her, and as Eight fell into a mild trance petting Judd and revelling in the feeling of whatever a cat was meant to be.  
  
And then the power went out. Because of course it did.  
  
"FUCK," Callie swore sharply.  
  
"FUCK," Three howled through a haze of laughter.  
  
"No swearing," Eight said absently.  
  
Well. Marie might have a point.  
  
Nothing seemed to have changed since the day Three met them after all.


	2. In Which Everything Is FINE Until Everything Is Suddenly NOT FINE

"FUCK!" Callie screamed out the window. In the distance, the sound of countless birds flying out of their nests echoed through the night.

Marie sighed and gnawed on a cookie. The disgusting kind that had raisins in them, because nothing was sacred to the twin witches who inhabited this dark domain. "Quit accusing me of being a witch just because I like raisins. I'm obviously a demon."

Oh hardy har har. "Stop mocking me."

"That's literally never going to happen," Marie said without a shred of hesitation. She popped open a bag of some kind of chocolates - a brand so generic it totally slipped out of her head the moment she stopped looking - and waved at Eight. "Eat up. We're gonna be here for a while." Sadly true. The key to the front door had been tucked away inside Marie's horrible kimono crop top fusion outfit thing. Whatever it was.

Seriously, what _was_ that garment.

"YOU GODDAMN SONS OF BASTARDS!" Callie continued to howl miserably. "I WAS GONNA PLAY SO MUCH MARIO PARTY TONIGHT! AND YOU RUINED IT! YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!"

God fucking damn it. One fucking day without that reference, all Three asked for. "Can we get Callie away from the window before she starts quoting even worse human entertainment?" This was reason number... _Twelve_... Of why Three eventually bought her own apartment - not doing that meant more time living on their couch listening to this trainwreck.

There was a sudden hiss noise, like a death rattle. It was Judd, its body distorting and twisting in Eight's arms as if it were made of slime or gelatin. Fuck you, demon monster! FUCK YOU! "So... Why did the lights turn off?" Eight asked slowly. She sounded casual, but there was a hint of panic in her voice. "Are we going to die?"

Why the fuck would-- Ah. Right. Octarian. Blackouts were basically omens of death. "No!" Callie roared, spinning around with a dramatic flourish. Why? Callie needed no reason. "And we shall _regret_ that in the coming days! For we are _**trapped!**_ _RESIGNED_ to this life! With _NOTHING TO FUCKING DO!"_

"Are we... _Sure?_ That the Hypnoshades didn't warp her brain in other ways?" Three asked. Marie sadly shook her head. So this was all natural Callie. Truly terrifying.

A sharp scowl flashed across Callie's face. "Hey! I see that mockery! I pay the rent for this place, so I've put a moratorium on mocking me!"

"Obviously? This month is about mocking Three, isn't it?" Eight said without a single hint of sarcasm.

Both of the idols stood there for a moment. Then, a faint wheezing started to make its way out of their throats. "Heh." It was physically possible to see the raw glee grow on them like vines, they were so fucking amused with themselves.

"Don't," Three sighed, despite understanding how futile it was to argue.

Both of the idols burst into wild laughter, despite Three's protests. Ugh. This happened _every_ fucking time, they _always_ tag teamed with their bullshit. Three never had anybody to mock either of them with, it fucking sucked. Fuckers.

She punched a number into her phone and leaned back on the couch. Seemed like this wasn't going to stop anytime soon. Let's see... Zapfish Aquaplant. Beep boop. Beep. The automated message system replied right away. _"We are aware of an issue in - The Greater Heights Area. - and are working on the issue. The cause of the power outage is - A downed power line. - The estimated time for repairs will be - Three hours. - Thank you for your patience."_

And then the boppy waiting music came on. Goddamn, that music was good. Shit was jamming.

"Gonna be three hours until we get the power back," Three reported, ignoring her stupid coworkers and their bullshit. At least it wasn't a Zapfish surge, those blackouts could last days. She looked at Eight, who was tremendously confused. "Just eat something. They're going to be like this for a while."

There was a loud ripping noise as Eight blinked innocently, chip dust staining the tips of her claws. In front of her, four separate packs of chips had been cut open. God_damn,_ that looked fucking useful. Sometimes Three wished she had claws, they just seemed so supremely useful. Which, for your information, was more useful than just very useful.

"Damn," Marie said suddenly. She inspected each one slowly and let out a low whistle. "Those babies are like knives. You keep them sharp, right?"

For a split second, Three saw a flicker of anger dance across Eight's face. It was... Yeah. That. Very. Y'know. Shut up. "Of course I do," Eight replied smoothly, effortlessly reclaiming her calm. "Only losers don't keep their claws sharp. They're super useful." Then, as if to demonstrate this, her hand lashed out and carved a hand-sized hole in a fifth bag of chips.

Everybody in the room clapped. Even Judd, horrible atrocity of nature that it was. If there was one thing that they all respected equally, it was lightning fast displays of martial skill.

Callie elected to then distribute snacks. Marie and Callie started gnawing on some chocolates, Eight started tossing whole handfuls of chips into her gaping maw of a mouth. And Three elected to have some sort of dry crackers with sour cream dip. It wasn't terrible, and that was really all Three asked for in a good food dip.

Eight glanced at Three. "Why is the power out? I thought the Zapfish provided infinite power."

Marie hummed. "Eh, that's only sort of true. Sure, they've got power for days, but they're super fragile. It's super easy to accidentally kill one." Truth. It _super_ didn't help the guilt of taking them back from Octarians when they died in your hands. The little guys had throats like tissue paper. "Why is the power out, though?"

"Power line is down somewhere." Probably because some rich fuckface crashed into a telegraph pole somewhere or whatever. Fucking Flounder Heights. FUCKING INKOPOLIS. "It's totally normal, relax."

An explosion of noise erupted from Callie's mouth as she fell to the floor in a heap. "Bluh! We were gonna have so much fun! We were gonna destroy you at Mario Party and do kareoke and then watch some lame dramas!"

Lame dramas or bad dramas? There was a line to be drawn here. First, there was a line between a drama and a soap opera. Dramas were fine, because they never escalated. When a drama begins to escalate, it ran the risk of becoming a soap opera, and Three had fucking issues with those. The acting was always atrocious, you could practically plot out an entire season through predictability, and who wanted to deal with tragedy when you could have fun? See, the problem was the balance of campiness and grit. If the balance shifted either way, you risked losing substance from the core of the work, so it was--

_Focus,_ Three. Fucking hell.

"I-It's fine!" Eight said, trying to reassure Callie. Not that she succeeded, because nobody distracted Callie from her delusional overreacting. "I'm just glad to meet the two of you as normal people! I've always wanted to meet you properly!"

"There's nothing _normal_ about them," Three sighed tiredly. She'd known this ever since they'd stalked her to her favourite cafe in order to bully her into friendship. She swiped a bag of chips, popped it open, and then poured them straight into her mouth. Some of them fell into her eyes. Three didn't care to remove them.

Marie smiled one of her incredibly rare Nice Smiles that beared no sinister intent. "Hey, it's nice to meet you properly too. We would've done this sooner, but we figured you should have some time to get used to life here." She yawned tiredly. "Plus we try to keep Agent stuff out of our daily lives, so we wanted to meet you outside of that. Me and Cal like to actually have. Y'know. Lives outside of constant action."

Eh. To each their own. Personally speaking, near death and peril were infinitely preferable to literally any kind of social activity ever. It was so much less stressful.

"Oh, really? Huh. I sort of expected you two to be more..." Eight made a weird motion with her hands. It was some kind of eldritch summoning sigil, most likely. "Superspies, you know? I thought the singing thing was more... A side thing?" Holy shit, that's fucking hilarious.

"I'd like to dress like a superspy," Callie replied. "They get those super cool slim sunglasses, and the stylish spysuits..."

"I could see you as a spy from the 2000s version of Charlie's Angelfish," Three said.

Marie sighed. "I mean, she's basically already a spy? She stole your records from Octo Valley, and she only got spotted due to luck." Three _should_ feel surprised about that but she really wasn't. "She's better at infiltration than I am, honestly."

"Sneakiness is my passion," Callie said without a trace of sarcasm.

Of course it was. "Weren't you two going to interrogate Eight or something?" Three asked tiredly.

The two idols blinked. Of course they forgot... "Right, right... Also, stop insulting us! Our memory isn't that bad, Three!"

"Stop reading my fucking **MIND** and I'll stop insulting you, witch!" Seriously, Three was not that expressive with her inner thoughts! How could anybody know what she was thinking? MAGIC. OBVIOUSLY. THE ONLY EXPLANATION.

"I'm a DEMON, thanks!" Marie yelled. "Callie is the witch!" 

"SO HOW ARE YOU ENJOYING THE SURFACE, EIGHT?!" Callie yelled somewhat hysterically, audibly trying to draw attention away from the 'witch' comment. As if that would work, pretty much everybody knew that Callie was a student of the occult.

A giant smile ripped across Eight's face. Seriously, smiles weren't meant to go that far. Eight might need another doctor's appointment. "It's so much fun! I've barely done anything this past week since I got to the Surface, but it's still the best time I've ever had!"

Eight's aura literally expanded outwards like a miniature sun. Judd, sensing the joy in the air, hissed horribly and pulled itself away to scamper into the shadows. Marie grinned. "Oh yeah? What've you been up to?"

_Everything._ Eight had been up to essentially everything. She was a nightmare tornado of activity, doing everything and anything that caught her attention. She woke up at Hell in the morning, watched the sunrise, and then watched TV or played videogames until around seven. Then, she'd sprint out the door to go battling. Three would get home some time around six, and arrive to Eight yelling and/or crying over anime while also tapping at her phone, and sometime during the night she would collapse into bed until morning.

Essentially: Eight _never stopped doing anything ever,_ and she was quickly becoming the sort of hedonist that Octarian propaganda liked to accuse Inklings of being.

"I'm an S+ Rainmaker player!" Eight cheered. She then tossed an entire chocolate bar into her mouth and swallowed it in one gulp. Fucking impressive, is what that was. "Though everybody keeps getting upset at me for some reason! They say that using my Shooter and the Rainmaker simultaneously is cheating, but it's more efficient, isn't it?"

AHAHAHA! CRY _MORE_ STUPID RANKERS! Stupid Toni Kensa wearing fucks. Can't cope when somebody stops playing like a moron, huh? Can't cope when somebody can actually FIGHT rather than play minigames? Fucking morons. Fucking fishgut barnacle leeches.

Marie shrugged. "I mean, you're supposed to only use the Rainmaker, but that's a courtesy thing. There's no hard rule about it. _Yet,_ anyway." Of course. Rankers had to ruin fun just to get themselves to sleep at night. "Break the rules in your favour. It's the best way to earn cash, shut up Three."

Yeah yeah. Three finished off her crackers and dip and snagged a bag of crisps as Eight continued. Ooh, sour cream flavour. "I guess, but it's so annoying! I'm strong enough to do it, so who cares if I do?" So fucking relatable. "Just jerks saying I'm a cheater for being better than them."

Yes! Yes, call them all out! CALL OUT THEIR SHIT! "Ranked is sort of a cesspool," Callie replied, validating everything Three had ever known immediately. "League is better though. It's basically just Turf Wars, but more difficult." Aaaaaand respect vanished. League was...

_Look._ Only people who were desperate for cash or outright _crazy_ played League.

"But... People from League are creepy. They keep muttering about stuff like 'flipdashing' and 'splashlockers', and sometimes they just start saying letters like they're words," Eight said through a mouth full of crisps, visibly shuddering.

Shit, Three did not envy her for making the mistake of thinking that League players were normal. Poor girl. Nobody in League was a sane person. NOBODY. "Did you kick their asses at least?" Three asked concernedly.

"Yeah, but they were really pleased about it, so it was hard to really take any sort of victory out of the whole thing," Eight grumbled. "What's the point of victory if you can't gloat about it? At least they knew what they were doing..."

Silently, Marie held out her hand in a silent request for a high five. Without even looking, Eight responded in kind, and then they did like six motions of a secret handshake on pure instinct. It was total bullshit, that sort of synchronization should have taken them years to pull off not ten minutes. How dare they break the laws of the universe?

... Was Three REALLY getting upset over secret handshakes? Holy shit, she must be more tired than she thought.

Callie nodded firmly. "I see, I see... Alright. Let me ask you a question, Eight. It's an _important_ one. It'll determine your _whole_ life here on the surface, so be prepared!" The tension in the room artificially skyrocketed. God damn it, they were doing this shit again?

"It absolutely will not determine your whole life here on the surface," Three interrupted, grabbing a pack of chocolate bites. "It's a question about lame anime."

"IT IS NOT LAME ANIME!" Callie roared. She began to Pose Dramatically, shifting from one Pose to the next. "I must ask you... Which series of the acclaimed franchise Rainbow Driver did you start with?!"

The moment when the wind gets yanked from a person's sails. The moment they're cut down, and are broken to the point of being unable to respond. The instant that somebody understands there is no recovery from the deep well of despair rising inside their soul, that even the brightest light can be consumed by the endless void.

_This_ is that moment. Treasure it deeply.

"Oh, I haven't watched Rainbow Driver yet." Have you ever watched somebody _shatter_ psychologically? "I've been watching lots of other stuff, though! _Maiden Mizu_, and _Journey Of A Nomad_, and _Gale Of Raleigh,_ and _My Intense Reincarnation As A Court Lady Who Tries To Seduce The Queen From Her Sorrows Amidst A Web Of Treachery!"_ What the fuck were any of those.

For real, Three had never heard of any of them. And what was that last one...? Was that a show, or a book summary?

Marie grinned. "Finally, some fucking culture in this apartment. What episode of My Intense Reincarnation are you up to?" Oh no. Oh god, no. Was Marie also a fan of this insane story name?

"I forget which episode exactly, but it's the one where Cleo promises to win the Rose Veil Tournament." Eight and Marie squealed in unison. It was _horrifying_. "I kind of hope that Frederica wins though, because I think the Sword of Hallowed Thorns suits her more than Cleo."

What the fuck was the genre of this story they were talking about??? Three glanced over at Callie, who seemed just as lost. She was also dying of depression over her lame show.

"You just like Frederica because she's got a temper like Three does," Marie said, and what? Excuse her??? What's going on???_ Is Three alive???_

Eight's entire face went red as a tomato. "Excuse me that's not at all why I like Frederica how dare you insinuate anything to the contrary Frederica knows lots of cool magic and she's super fashionable she's nothing like Three at all so me liking Frederica as a character has nothing to do with Three you shut up RIGHT NOW!"

Wh. What. That is. She didn't. No. But. Yeah. "Yeah. It. Y'know. Eight likes. Whoever. I don't care. Y'know. And it. I. That's not. I ain't. The thing. That Eight said. Yeah. And that. Mmm. Yeah." ... Fucking _fantastic_ defense, Three. Your mastery of language shines yet again.

A wild cackle ripped out of Marie's throat. "Aha, I knew it! You can't deny it, you two!" Deny what?! What the fuck was she talking about?! 

"IGNORING MY INTENSE REINCARNATION!" Eight yelled, ripping the topic away from what Marie had just said. "Ignoring that! Ignoring ALLLL of that! I also watched Last Rites!"

From the depths of sorrow, the light of rage awakens in Callie's soul! "WH-WH-WH-WHAAAAAAT?! YOU WATCHED THAT BORING MAGICAL GIRL SHOW AND NOT RAINBOW DRIVER?!"

Eight nodded firmly as she swallowed some crisps. "Yup! I watched seasons 1 through 4!"

"Oh, season 3 was super good, wasn't it?" Marie asked.

"Yeah!" Eight chirped.

"B-B-But _Rainbow Driver!"_ Callie protested. "How could you have time to watch four seasons of Last Rites and not a single episode of Rainbow Driver?! Three, tell her! Tell her that Rainbow Driver is cool!"

Hm. What to do, what to do... Oh, right. Tell the truth. Callie was a liar, so the truth was like her kryptonite. "The only good season was Rainbow Driver Eater." The one season regarded as the low point of the franchise, because most people didn't have taste. "And anyway, I don't like anime all that much to begin with, so my opinion is pretty much moot."

Callie snarled. "Eater isn't even a proper Driver! She's the worst!" Yeah, she really _was..._ Monster ladies were so fucking badass... "You just like Eater because she's your type!"

Three frowned. "I don't have a type." Other than muscles and dangerous. But that was such a wide descriptor it didn't really _count_ as a type... "And anyways, don't try to divert attention away from the argument at hand. Eight was telling us how much better Last Rites is than Rainbow Driver."

"I'm not sure if it's better, but the fights between Anja and Jyura in season 2 were so amazing!" Eight cheered, pulling a notepad out of her pocket. "Marie, I have to ask this of you: Do you think Taroth was a better villain than Hazak, or do you actually have a brain?" SHOTS FIRED. Three had no idea where or who the shots were aimed at, but it was a valuable skill to know when shots were fired.

"I mean, Taroth does have better outfits..." Marie said slowly. Eight contemplated this for a moment before nodding slowly, like this was a worthwhile point in a discussion. "But like, Hazak has the aesthetic to end it all. If that woman came to my door asking to end the world? I would let her."

Eight nodded. "Oh, of course. I get that. Hazak is super cute." A knife of an emotion Three didn't care to think about rammed into her throat. Carefully, she removed it and put it into the box full of other emotional knives and locked it so she didn't have to think about that shit. "It's like an evil wedding aesthetic, I dig it."

Three's brain heard Eight say the word 'wedding' and decided, entirely against her wishes, to imagine Eight in a wedding dress. It was-- REDACTED. THAT TOO. THAT THOUGHT ALSO. ALL OF THESE THOUGHTS ARE EVIL. NONE OF THEM ARE FREE OF SIN. Guh! Why the hell did her brain do this?!

Hah... Then again, why is she fucking shocked? She barely managed to keep a handle on herself at the best of times, but Eight just had this terrifying way of ripping through any sort of defenses Three had. It was freaky as hell, to be honest. Any time she was around, her brain just... Flicked off. Did whatever it wanted without Three's consent.

Every time she smiled, it just... Made Three feel right inside. And that was... New. <strike>(Scary.)</strike> Like. Yeah, Three was friends with Callie and Marie, but that was different. There was time and trust there, seven months of combat and teamwork and kicking ass together. Not this fucking... Black magic Eight had, weaving something tight and painful around Three's soul.

Fucking hell. Three almost wanted to go back in time two years, the general emotion smoothie of all encompassing terror and mind-blanking rage was so much easier to deal with than all these... Actual thoughts and emotions running through her head. Maybe one day she'd die, and she'd become a brainless zombie in undeath.

God, that would be so much more tolerable.

Callie groaned loudly. "Guuuuuyyyyyyyys! I'm so booooored!"

"Then Perish," Eight replied simply, forcing Three to choke on her current snack. She coughed a dozen times before falling to the floor and wheezing in desperate lungfuls of air. "But no seriously, are you certain? Don't you have DSeseseses... _DSesss..._ The portable game console from Nintendo?"

"I have a Gameboy," Marie said calmly.

Callie sighed. "She doesn't want to get a DS."

"Because there's no reason to! Nothing on the DS is good!" Marie yelled back.

"Fossil Fighters," Three said suddenly. Because like. Fossil Fighters was her childhood, man. That and Spectrobes. Her goddamn childhood made manifest.

Eight gasped. "But... But what about Pokemon?!" She pulled her own DS from her pocket and waved it about. "I thought you loved Pokemon! You even did a whole Splatfest over it!" Her eyes flashed with betrayal, and glistened with tiny tears.

Something cold and sharp slipped into Marie's eyes. "No. I love real Pokemon." What was... Oh._ Ooooh._ This was stupid, and Three dearly hoped she wasn't right.

"You're a GENWUNNER?!" Three yelled. Oh, _for--_ "You sick sack of shit! What, are you too fond of your worthless fucking Charizard to actually get some goddamn taste in monsters?!"

Eight gasped. "What?! No! Marie, I thought you were a good person!" _Howoahoahoah!_ Shots fucking fired!

"Listen, the original 150 are--"

"There are over 800 and you focus on barely one-eighth that number--"

The friendship born from gushing over anime shattered like glass as both of them drew weapons and started shouting louder.

Three sighed and settled in. This was only going to end one of two ways... And hey, Three may as well support Eight. Anything for a chance to mock Marie without consequence.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, it ended a third way - _the police._

"Yes, officer. We'll keep the noise down."

The poor officer at the door carefully eyed the apartment. He looked at Callie, who was at the door, and then Judd who was making eyes at things nobody could see, and then at Marie nursing several bruises on her arms, and then at Eight who was stripping a Charger down to the base parts, and then at Three who had a plate of tofu, and then at the red and green ink coating the walls, and he seemed to silently come to the conclusion that he _wasn't paid enough for this._ "Alright. I'll be on my way then. Keep it down? I guess?"

And then he left. Callie slowly shut the door. Inhaled. "Those. Absolute. FUCKERS." She looked fucking pissed. On Callie, it was sort of like discovering that a shower loofah was holding you hostage with a knife. "They called the COPS on us! NARCS! ALL OF YOU ARE FUCKING NARCS!"

"Stay classy, Callie," Three sighed.

"Oh, I will. I'll stay_ so_ fucking classy."

"Anyway. Eight, why are you fucking with Marie's Charger? She loves that Charger."

"I really do! Why the hell are you taking it apart?!" Marie wailed, literally shuddering as she resisted the urge to deck Eight across the jaw. Seriously, Three had seen her do that once. Guy who grabbed her Charger had spent a month in traction over it.

Eight huffed and fiddled with a screw. "You've been abusing this poor thing and I'm giving it some tender loving." Fuck. _Shit._ God damn it. Son of a fuck. Fuck _off_ brain. God damn everything. This fucking _sucked._ Why did Eight say that. Shit. FUCK. "Are you just averse to maintaining weapons? I thought you were cool, Marie."

"It's a common mistake," Three interjected with a grin as she chewed on a cookie.

"Okay, no, no, listen. I just use so many damn Chargers. You think I remember which ones need maintenance?" Marie replied grumpily. "Seriously, I use like thirteen of them a week. I'm lucky to remember that any of them even work, still."

The look in Eight's eyes was carefully disapproving. Something was bound to snap, sooner or later. Somebody would do something Eight couldn't abide by, and the hero worship would break in two. This was definitely pushing it, Three thought.

"Whatcha doin' to it, anyhoo?" Callie asked, butchering language like some unfathomable slaughterer of communication. "Amping up the fire rate?"

Cities had been burned by the look on Eight's face. "No, I'm giving the thing an overhaul. The IMPs are mismanaged, and I swear that the synch-panel is so scratched it's lowering how much ink comes in from the tank. And don't even get me started on the canister! Don't even!"

Oh, hey. Three recognized that. "Kelp Charger? Huh. Been a while since I saw one of those... Oh, don't fuck with the nozzle. There's a manufacturing defect on like 4% of all Splat-type Chargers that make the weapon impossible to use if you screw the nozzle on weird."

"Oh, I saw that first thing. I think it's a secondary thread, probably caused by heat deformations. The plastic probably melted just enough to create that secondary thread, and nobody noticed until it was too late." She tapped the body of the weapon and sighed. "That said, the APM is pretty substandard. It takes way too long to charge up, I noticed."

"It's because it's meant to be a starter weapon. Kids use it to get used to using Chargers, so it's designed to be shitty." The corporate exec speak was 'A Weapon designed to make Turfers wish for something better', but everybody knew it was just an excuse to sell cheap crap to newbies.

Eight gave Three a Look. "That's no excuse for incompetence. Look at this, the motor for the APM is practically dead! It barely moves at all!" What? That shouldn't... Three glanced at the mechanism for the Kelp Charger. Looked like... Oh, those fuckers.

"You bought a Kelp Charger in 2017?!" Three asked with no small amount of derision. For fucks sake, why was Three friends with these idiots? "You bought a Splat-type weapon in the midst of the _biggest scandal in the Weapons industry?!"_ Oh, come on! Everybody knew that you couldn't trust anything made by Stingwork!

Those fuckers made their crap for the lowest dollar! If you pushed weapons with a Stingwork APM motor to their limits, chances are the internals of the weapon would expand and stop working altogether! Even newbies knew not to trust Stingwork and their shit! What the fuck, Marie!

"Excuse me for wanting a bargain!" Marie yelled.

"Money is replaceable! Combat prowess is not!" Eight yelled back. She glared at Three for a moment before her eyes softened. Whatever the fuck that meant, Three had no idea. "Can I fix it? Is it possible?"

Three shook her head sadly. "Nope. The entire unit is sealed, so once the motor goes, the entire weapon goes." Fucking Stingwork. That said... "I think you could cannibalize another weapon for its motor instead, though."

"You mean recycle," Eight replied firmly. "We're recycling old equipment to make current equipment better."

"No, I mean _cannibalizing_. We're ripping the guts of one weapon to heal another." Recycling meant you turned the thing into something else entirely.

"No, you mean _recycling!"_ Eight protested, giggling slightly.

"Cannibalizing," Three replied, feeling a small grin forming on her face as she moved to sit down next to Eight.

Eight huffed loudly. "You're allowed to be wrong." She was still grinning though. It looked very... Interesting. Yes. That was the word.

"Oh, I _am_, am I?"

"I know that it hurts to admit."

"Oof. My hearts. They burn with hatred."

"Truly, I am doomed to be the victim of such wild emotion."

Suddenly, Three was suddenly gutpunched in the face by the realization that she'd shown emotion in front of horrible demonic nightmares. Callie had, at some point, gone missing. Marie, in the mean time, was waggling her eyebrows as if that fucking meant anything. Fucking god damn it. God damn it. Shit. Fucking hell. Fucking Squid Sisters. FUCKING CUTTLEFISH CLAN. Death to all of them.

And of course, because it was Marie, she had to open her fucking mouth. "You two need a room, or do you just want to flirt out here?" ... Flirt? What? Who, that was, you can't, ridiculous, it wasn't, because, y'know, and the, not really, it, that, Eight wasn't, when did, why, absurd! ABSURD! "You're thinking that's an absurd thing to ask, aren't you?"

_"STOP FUCKING READING MY MIND, MARIE!"_

"Stop making it so fucking _easy!"_ Marie hissed back. "And yes, _flirting!_ You two are flirting!"

"What No No Way I would Know If We Were Flirting That's Impossible!" Eight blurted, words exploding from her like a fucking supernova. And. Like. You know. True. Eight was super right. All the right. So right. That was Eight. Right all the time. Yup. Three just. Nodded. Like one of those little. You know the ones. The birds.

THE DRINKY BIRDS. THEY BOBBED UP AND DOWN. THREE WAS THAT.

"What even is flirting!?" Three screeched.

"Exactly Just Like Three Said What Even Is Flirting!" Eight screeched.

Marie gave them both a Look, as if she were staring at the most disgusting pile of garbage in her entire life. "Really. You, Agent Eight, formerly known as 85-888, are pretending you don't know what flirting is." What was that supposed to mean?

For some reason, Eight turned away. "I have no idea what you're talking about." Wait. Did she... Actually know? "That's not me. I'd never do that."

"Sixty-seven counts of fraternization say different," Callie sang as she swooped back into the room. She had a huge paper file under her arm, thick enough it could reasonably be used as a weapon or some shit. "I totes forgot that I buried this under my nail polish crate."

Storing classified documents about Octarian soldiers under a bedazzled storage tub filled with nail polish. Never change, Callie.

But wait, hold on. "Sixty-seven counts of fraternization?! Did you just hit on anything that moved?!" Three asked numbly. Eight looked even further away. No way. What the _fuck _was this, even??? "Are there even that many ways to flirt with somebody?"

Eight shifted uncomfortably for a moment. "I will not apologize."

... _"That doesn't answer the question,"_ Three said. The emotions she should be feeling weren't reaching right now. She just sort of felt numb.

Marie tossed a cookie in her mouth and swiped the paper file. "Says here the first time you ever got assigned to cleaning the sewer pipes was after you hit on a high-ranking officer of Sector 2. Vice Commander Marshal Hayne?" Wait. Hold up. Stop. Vice Commander was the third highest rank in a given Sector. How??? Why???

"Okay, in fairness, that happened before I knew I was into women!" Wait. No. _Stop_. Eight was into women? That happened before she knew? Eight was into women. Why was this such a big deal to Three right now? Eight was into women. That was a thing that could happen. It was a thing. A thing that happened. Not that it had much relevance to Three. At all. _Ever._ **_Shut up._** _**You bastards. THREE HATES YOU ALL OUT OF HER HEAD.**_ "I thought you said you kept Agent work outside of your normal lives, why are we bringing this up now?!"

Why did this matter now? It's not like it had much relevancy to Three. Goddammit, Eight. Was this more of her witchcraft? No, daemonic magicks. From the pits of the world, a bloody goddamn monstrosity had arisen solely to ensnare Three's mind. THAT WAS THE ONLY EXPLANATION. THERE WAS NO OTHER EXPLANATION.

_DARK MAGIC_. THAT IS ALL THIS WAS. SHUT UP YOU'RE WRONG IT'S THE ONLY EXPLANATION YOU SHUT THE HELL UP WEIRD DIMENSIONAL GHOST VOICES.

Callie leaned back and grinned. "Oh, this isn't about Agency work. This is your _hazing_, rookie."

Eight sighed and let her head slam into the kotatsu table. "Ugh. UGHHHHH."

"Quite the rulebreaker," Marie said with a smirk as she flipped through the file. "In what is possibly the most_ rule-abiding_ way I've ever seen. I gotta say, I'm curious as to how you aced sensitivity training, but made your instructor put a mark in your file so you never went back."

"I aggressively pretended to be a new recruit and asked as many stupid questions as possible. One of my instructors cried, I think."

Hah. "That technique shall serve you well here on the surface," Three intoned. "For real, there are so many assholes you can avoid by being purposefully stupid."

"Like you?" Eight replied innocently.

"Fuck offfff," Three yawned.

Callie snorted and flipped through another couple of pages. Then she saw one that she just had to voice, showing it off to Marie. Oh god, what was this one gonna be. "So Eight... How did your team get their first promotion, exactly?"

A look of raw mortification crossed Eight's face for a split second. Panic set in. Her eyes zipped about, visibly looking at the exits. Door, window, window, hallway, not that it exactly mattered. As if Callie or Marie would let her escape without their story. "Just tell them," Three sighed. "You'll never get out of here if you don't."

"... We got assigned to clean out the sewer pipes for screwing up a patrol. You ever seen the sewer pipes?" Everybody else shook their heads. There had never been any Zapfish close to the pipes, so there had never been any reason to go there. "They're _awful_. They connect directly to the ocean, so it's easy to get rid of all the sewage the Domes create. But because they connect to the sea, we also get to deal with Salmonids."

Ugh. Fucking monsters. "Sounds like hell," Callie said.

"It is. It's our only way to get power eggs to keep the power supply up though, so we have to deal with it. But anyways, it's filthy in there. You don't know the meaning of the word 'slimy' until you've been in there. And as punishment detail, you get sent in to clean them. There are places on your body that spontaneously create themselves so gunk can get stuck in them." Eight continued on, and with every word, rage grew in her voice. "Anyways, my team got sent in to clean the pipes for six hours. A shower had never sounded so good. But do you know what happened? Do you know what happened?"

Suddenly, Three got a flash of why Eight was so angry. That was fucking cruel. "Oh, shit, don't fucking tell me--"

"SOME. WORTHLESS. _REBEL._ SHUT OFF THE WATER FOR THE SHOWERS," Eight snarled. Death was running wild in her eyes. Somebody was likely to die tonight. Either that, or become a victim of Eight's rage. Either or. Very interesting. "We hunted that soulless reprobate across the entire Dome, and terrorized him so completely he turned himself in. It is the one moment of my life that I will never ever regret. We met Captain Grimm the next day."

Marie nodded for a moment over the sound of Callie's laughter. "So... You systematically hunted one guy in an area the size of three football stadiums... Because he stopped you from having a shower." She paused and pointed. "Now, that's funny, but I don't know why you blushed. Nothing too weird in that story."

Eight froze and started scanning the exits again before muttering something under her breath. "Speeh, speeh, speeheeeeheeeheeeheee!" Callie giggled. "Speeeheeeak uuup!"

A tremendous sigh heaved out of Eight's throat. "... We dragged the rebel in, but they almost killed us because all the gunk on our bodies made us look like monsters from the bottom of the ocean. We got called _the sewer squad_ for three years."

"Hot," Three said aloud as the image of Eight as a version of the Creature From The Black Lagoon suddenly formed in her head. Everybody looked at her. Fuck. SHIT. _GOD DAMN IT._ _YOU STUPID FUCKING MORON WHYYYYYYY._ AAAAAAAARGH. NO. FUCKING HELL. "The weather. It's. _Wow._ Very harsh. Unbelievable."

**YOU. FUCKING. DIPSHIT. JUST FUCKING STOP TALKING FOREVER!**

"... We are having a talk about this disaster you're somehow creating later," Callie said blankly, before her smile slammed back onto her face. "But huh, wasn't expecting that. Wasn't on your file..."

Eight sipped at her water. "Documentation doesn't take into account the callsigns that patrol squads use for each other. That's why nobody ever called my squad out for calling Tammy Lune's squad the bait buddies after they nearly got eaten by Salmonids." Wow, Three was learning all kinds of things about Eight today. "Anyways, is my hazing over yet? _Please?"_

There was a long silence as Callie flipped through a few pages. "Hmmm. Hmmmmmm. _Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm_. Well... I do want to ask you about this section where you apparently got hit with some charges over drunken behaviour? What was that about?"

Eight would have opened her mouth to reply, but a loud growling noise came from her stomach. It sounded like a washing machine given the ability to snarl at people, which did actually sound like a solidly decent B-movie. Props for that. However, it was still fucking terrifying enough to make everybody jump. "Oops. I guess I'm still hungry."

"Fucking what?!" Marie said, sitting up. "You ate practically half of the snacks! You and Three have practically emptied the entire apartment of cheap snackfood! Me and Callie barely got to eat anything tonight!" What? No they hadn't! They had just...

No, they_ would've_ noticed. They'd be feeling full by now, wouldn't they? "If we ate so much, we would've noticed... Wouldn't we?"

There was a long pause. "How much _did_ we eat?" Eight asked worriedly. The two of them turned back towards the small mountains of rubbish they'd accidentally created. "I don't like this. At all. Even if we didn't notice how much we ate, we should've started to feel full or bloated. Trust me, I know what that feels like!"

Callie smirked. "Maybe it just went right through you and you'll need to spend an hour on the toilet later on."

"Don't be gross," Three scowled.

"I hate to admit it, but... She _might_ have a point?" Eight winced.

God, Three hoped not. "Three, I think we have some bread in the kitchen," Marie sighed. "Go make some killer sandwiches, maybe those will sate you two." Yeah... Yeah, that was a good idea.

Three got up and walked into the kitchen, thinking everything through. This was stupid, how could they both eat that much and not notice...? There had to be a reason, right? She tore open some cupboards until she found the bread, and then kept hunting for some vegetables. "You assholes keep vegetables, don't you?"

"We have some mayo!" Callie called.

God damn it, Callie. Mayo isn't a veggie! Ugh, hunting for real food in this apartment was a proper nightmare... Well, they had some tofu and some spices. It was probably something she could turn into a proper sandwich... See, this is why you keep a wellstocked fridge. Lettuce, tomato, cheese, you can make a proper dagwood with that.

Three turned to put the ingredients on the bench, and-- "Hello, Agent." DAH! FUCKING JUDD! The disgusting abomination was just there, goddamn it, fucking how?! How didn't Three fucking see the thing when it came in?! "There is no point in attempting to uncover that particular truth, Agent. Focus on things you might actually learn."

Fucking-- God, why did it fucking talk? Why did this thing fucking talk? Focus, just. Fucking focus, ignore the fucking abomination and make the damn sandwiches! Cut the tofu, add some spice, throw some ketchup on, it's flavour and it'll tide them over for now. It'll work. It's _fine._ "Just have to make it through tonight and then I don't see your freaky shitshow for another year," Three muttered.

The thing casually batted a knife off the counter. Shit! That could've actually hurt her! "Agent, I dare say you're panicking." OH REALLY? WHAT THE FUCK GAVE IT AWAY? WAS IT THE WILD PANIC?! "I understand that you hold some mildly justified fear towards my current form, but do try to keep it together."

** _what the fuck does that mean WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN_ **

"Really trying here..." Don't look at it. Ignore it. Make the sandwiches. If you make the sandwiches and leave it can't scare you anymore.

Judd tilted its head and silently bounced up onto Three's shoulder, deceptively and terribly unheavy. Not light, not weightless, unheavy. There was a difference in words. It rumbled for a moment before speaking again. "... You aren't reacting to your circumstances," it said after a moment. It sounded vaguely surprised.

"You mean the circumstances of a fucking eldritch creature touching my fucking person?!" Three whispered, an inch away from screaming.

Judd huffed and lifted two of its limbs, short paws suddenly unfurling out into unsettlingly Inkling-esque... Or would that be human-esque... Fingers. It grasped Three's head and forcibly twisted so that Three was staring right into its horrible golden eyes. "No. I had thought you smarter than this, Agent, truly I did. Have you not realized yet?"

"... Realized what?"

Judd didn't blink. Didn't move. It was like a computer delivering a fact made of cold mathematics and logic. "The fact that you are dying, of course."

...

......

.........

What?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AFTER TEN THOUSAND YEARS, I HAVE REAWAKENED!
> 
> holy shit this chapter kicked my ass


	3. Pizza Solves All Of Life's Woes

Death was a novelty to Inklings.

It very rarely came up. Inklings lived long lives, could heal almost any non-lethal wound, and had technology that could bring them back from almost anything. With the exception of life-threatening illness or old age, nothing could really permanently kill an Inkling. According to a survey conducted some years ago, people of all ages associated the word 'death' with 'temporary obstacle' rather than something to be concerned about.

<strike> _(you stupid intolerable fuck! you're dying and youre rambling about fucking cultural impact?! what the fuck is wrong with you?!)_ </strike>

<strike> _(dying. she was dying. but that wasn't right. the doctor said she was healthy perfectly healthy can't be dying not yet.)_ </strike>

In fiction, it was used more like a mild deterrent. Like those old 50s cartoons, where they used dynamite and bombs - it was never permanent, you just got messed up a little. It was more common to see villains be sealed away or kept alive in agony rather than be killed. Some anime even used it as a gag - if a character was being stupid or annoying, you could expect them to be killed a lot.

<strike> _(i can't believe this, why can't you just stop fucking thinking for once?! for the first time in your fucking life actually get some fucking answers before this slips through your fingers!)_ </strike>

<strike> _(because if she was dying that would mean she would be like-- no. no, not now, she couldn't afford to freak out right now. don't. stop thinking about it. stop, stop, stop, stop.)_ </strike>

Not to say it was impossible to die. If you were out of range of a Spawnpoint, you'd die like anything else. Just a bag full of loose ink and cartilage. But then, that was why most Inklings weren't big on the country life - most towns only got two or three Spawnpoints, and they usually only covered the local hospital and school. But in Inkopolis? In the heart of Cephink, birthplace of the Inkling race? Over four hundred.

<strike> _(you fucking moron! just stop! shut up! for once, just shut up! stop rambling about horseshit and actually think for once in your fucking life!)_ </strike>

<strike> _(why wouldn't that image go away?! she just wanted to not think about it!)_ </strike>

Each one covered just about three blocks, and there wasn't a single block in the city that didn't have at least two Spawnpoints covering it. It was part of the big push for public safety after the Great Turf War, actually, which had a lot of interesting history behind it! It was proposed by Senator Finnbar Mack from Calamari County, a lot of people said he was just pushing the agenda of a few war friends at the time but y'know that was just the talk of people who hadn't fought and didn't understand how dangerous the war had been, so-- 

<strike> _(i can't fucking believe this! why are you so fucking useless when it counts?! why can't you just fucking slow the fuck down and--)_ </strike>

<strike> _(please stop. why couldn't she stop?! didn't want to think about this or that or any of it! she just wanted it to go away, why couldn't she--)_ </strike>

** _F O C U S._ **

Reality swam back into focus. Judd, looking mildly concerned, sat dead ahead of her. Something rough and plastic sat in her right hand - a knife, the knife, she was making a sandwich. That was right. She had actually been doing something before this. How long had it been? "How long have I been--" she croaked, feeling her head shift in uncomfortable ways.

"Not particularly long," Judd said vaguely. "Now then. May we speak rationally, or are you going to resume your panic attack?"

Oh, Three didn't know! That sounded _really fucking attractive_ to her! Panic attacks meant she was freaking out too much to focus on what she was worried about! Maybe she'd stop focusing on why this fucking eldritch monstrosity seemed to think she was d-- NOPE! Not using that word! Ignoring that! The cat was wrong! Cat was _wrong!_ Not looking at it not listening to it shut up she was going to make some sandwiches and then tolerate the rest of the night and go on with her life as if nothing was wrong at all!

"Fuck you! Fuck you, I'm justified in panicking!" Three said, only mostly hysterically. Part of it was still steeped in panic.

Judd rolled its eyes like Three was being a baby for panicking over being told she was dying by a fucking eldritch monstrosity. It got up to move again, mass shifting across its form until it was no longer a slim bony creature, and transformed into what could only be described as an overweight caricature of its original form. "Perhaps you will take this more seriously if I mention that the other Agent is dying as well."

... Eight. Eight was dying as well. No, no no no no, that-- Three couldn't-- She _couldn't_ let that happen, absolutely _not._ No. Fucking hell. "... Talk. Start talking. Don't fucking stop." This-- She fucking refused to let Eight-- No, she wasn't even going to fucking THINK that, it wasn't going to happen.

Judd gave a faint smile. There were too many teeth. "You and the other Agent are dying. In other circumstances, I would give the two of you anywhere between one or two months to survive." That was a timeline. That could be researched. "But at the current rate... A week. Give or take a few days, I would suppose."

... A week.

She supposed it was more than other people got.

<strike> _(more than dad got)_ </strike>

Focus. "Is this fixable?" Three asked quietly, throwing herself back into making the sandwiches. If her body focused on the bland repetition, she could focus her mind on the questions. "What I suppose I'm asking is if this is uncurable."

The cat tilted its head back and forth for a moment, audibly deciding how to answer. "In a manner of speaking, it is and it is not. It is quite _fixable_ if you act now, and quite _dangerous_ if you do not." That answered nothing, thanks. The cat mulled over the question for a moment more. "Not that it should take that long. I would be rather shocked if you did not figure it out before sunrise."

So basically, Three was an idiot for not figuring out the riddle of some demented eldritch monster and if she didn't figure it out, Eight would die. And like, Three would too, but that was less important. Which. Y'know nobody should really focus on why Three thought her own life was worth less than Eight's. It's not particularly important.

Focus, Three.

Right. How best to figure this out... Well. She wouldn't, not tonight. She was tired, hungry, and barely understood what the hell the nightmare creature was on about. Dying in a week? She was healthy, so she had no idea what could actually be killing her. Even if it was the goop that'd been attached to her head, what could she actually do about it?

... It was curable, Judd said that.

But then, what could it be? Something that could kill her within a week, but was immediately curable? Was there even an illness out there like that?

... Food. She was making food. Make the food. Bread, mayo, chopped tofu, more tofu, some spices, more mayo, bread. Yes, this was a shitty sandwich. But it was the best she could do with the substandard shit that Callie and Marie kept in their apartment. Maybe next time she was here, she'd bully the two into having some kind of actual nutrition in their fucking lives.

Judd tilted its head unnervingly. "Are you not going to ask me about this situation, Agent?"

Hah. As if. "Why bother? You'll just be a cryptic piece of shit again, so I may as well just ignore anything else you say." Three grabbed a knife and then sliced both sandwiches diagonally down the center. Triangles - the CORRECT cutting option for a sandwich. The perfect option.

Like. Not to be judgemental-- OKAY NO, Y'KNOW WHAT? _YES_ JUDGEMENTAL. If you cut your sandwiches in any way that isn't triangular, if you eat your sandwiches whole or as rectangles, you're an idiot. The absolute dumbest. You probably think the world is flat, is how dumb you are. Triangles are the optimal shape. They're cool, they're efficient, they're stylish, you can even store more triangle-shaped things than square things.

So cut your damn sandwiches properly. Three never wanted to see a square sandwich ever again.

Anyways. Sandwiches done. "Y'know, if I ever have to make a sandwich out of mayo and spices _ever_ again, I'm going to destroy you both!" Seriously, how hard was it to have a proper fridge with ingredients in it? Three was borderline obsessive about being frugal, and even then she usually got everything she needed when she went shopping.

And more irritatingly, Callie was a vegetarian! How could she NOT have any vegetables in her fucking home?! Did she just-- Oh, of course she did! She just snacked on whatever and got takeout! How was THREE the most healthy eater?! She'd been a wreck for _years!_ How the hell did she eat better than two actual idols of the music industry?!

"You say that, but you're too nice to try and murder us!" Marie called. Oooh, just you watch. Just you fucking watch. One day, Three would kill them all. She'd kill them all. Nobody would stop her, she'd gladly go to jail over it. "And we'd just respawn if you did anyways! It's an empty threat, Three!"

Three would show _them_ a fucking empty threat, all right... You wanna see an empty threat? She had fucking loads of them. Goddamn crush you in a pile of them.

She stormed out into the loungeroom with her new sandwiches and handed them to Eight. "Eat. These are trash sandwiches, but I made do."

"So why were you out there so long?" Eight asked suspiciously. She shoved an entire triangle into her mouth, chewed exactly twice, and then swallowed. It was fucking hideous and amazing all at the same time.

"The fucking cat," Three hissed back. "I hate it so much."

Eight shoved the rest of the sandwiches down in short order. It was like a massacre, only with food. Weirdly charming, too. She looked Three in the eye, with the sort of look that you only share when you've spent just enough time with somebody to know they were holding shit back but not well enough to know what exactly. 

"It's a sandwich, so it's not that complicated. And Judd's cute, but not that cute. What actually happened in there?" ... It... Should she... But it would... Ugh, fucking hell! She didn't even know whether she should say it or not! What the fuck was she even meant to say?! Oh, we're dying?! YEAH, THAT'LL GO OVER GREAT! "Hey, you're panicking. Come on, tell me what's wrong."

... Was it really that obvious? "The nightmare demon says that we're dying," Three said with a level of calm she didn't really feel. Eight was dying and Three was dying and it was something probably untouched by modern science or some shit and she was SO FUCKING FAR BEYOND PANIC that it bordered on the absurd. "In a week. I don't know what to do."

There was a long pause. Then, Marie stood up and grabbed the Charger Eight had been fiddling with. "I'm going to go have a talk with him." And then she left the room.

Another pause. It was then followed by Eight interlocking her fingers and popping the joints. "Alright then. Let's workshop this issue. It's nothing we can't manage if we work together." She turned to Three and grinned dangerously. "I just got a life to live. I'm not giving it up for some random cause of death that can't even be bothered to show itself properly, got it?"

Three exhaled and let out a breath she had no idea she was holding. She'd been worried about how Eight would take it, but honestly, it was stupid to be worried. "Got it."

Callie hummed. "If it's something that'd kill you in a week, there would be symptoms that are highly visible." Any humour on her face had died a painful death. Agent One had taken over. "Or at least noticeable."

The three of them thought for a moment. In the kitchen, several yowls and screeches of pain echoed outwards. Hm... What symptoms could there be? Three hadn't felt anything at all. In fact, the doctor had called her perfectly... Healthy...

_ **Wait.** _

During Eight's first time battling, she saw her callouses were healing over. And she noted that Three's scars were vanishing. Combine that with the fact that somebody like Three, who was outside a hospital via sheer luck, was somehow healthy... The goop had been healing them. Okay, that was one thing.

But it was healing things that didn't need to be healed, like scar tissue - scar tissue was a natural thing to occur, and while it did heal over eventually it didn't just magically vanish. That wasn't how it worked. So... Was it... Not healing them, but fixing them? Trying to restore them to their "prime", as it were?

Or.... Maybe... Immediately, Three and Eight turned and pointed at each other. "THE FOOD!"

"What," said Callie, already lost.

"You ate that huge chocolate dish from Crusty Sean's!" Three yelled.

"And then the next day we had all that food at the food court!" Eight yelled back.

Holy shit, it all made _sense_ now! No wonder they hadn't suspected anything! "You're totally healthy! I'm totally healthy!"

There was a loud bang as Eight jumped to her feet. "It wasn't healing us, not naturally!"

Oh holy shit, YES! Three followed her up and grinned. "It was just enhancing our natural regenerative ability!"

Eight stepped closer. "There was never any _chance_ we'd notice! There's nothing inherently wrong with us!"

Three stepped even closer. "No matter who we spoke to, nobody would say we're diseased or sick! Holy shit, it was literally under our noses!"

"You're a genius!" the two of them yelled at the same time. Then they paused, and noticed just _how close_ the two of them were standing. Immediately, they jumped away.

Callie sighed Dramatically. "Okay, so I don't have a lesbian romance-based mental link just yet, so could you just explain your theory to me?"

Eight shook her head rapidly. "No, not yet! We need food! We need to go eat the fattiest, junkiest food around!"

From the kitchen, Marie yelled: "Go to Louie's!" Oh shit, that pizza place...? God, Three had only gone there once, and she still felt like the grease was working its way out of her throat. But yeah, that would make more sense, wouldn't it? "It's not far!"

Callie sighed and tossed Three the key to the front door. Wait, hadn't Marie had it... Or were there duplicates all along? OR HAD SHE CONJURED IT LIKE A WITCH?! "I AM NOT A WITCH. Go buy some stuff and come back, okay? This is now a Splatoon matter, and we will have to discuss it in length."

Three nodded and grabbed her wallet. "Be back in a few! Eight, come on!"

Eight nodded. "Right!"

_\---_

The second the two were out the door, Callie sighed irritably. "Geez... You two come with all sorts of problems, don't you?" She got up and stared at the window. There it was... She'd meant to grab that thing all night since she noticed it.

She reached up and grabbed the curtain rod, and then tilted it. A small black disc with a blinking red light slid out from inside. Damn it, an audio bug. How many more were in their apartment...?

"A gift from the old woman?" Marie asked, walking out of the kitchen. Judd trailed behind her, the few scratches Marie inflicted on him already healing.

"I think so. Fuck, debugging this place is going to be a _nightmare_..." Seriously, why did that crazy old lady care so much? Was she working for Central? For Int-Ops? Kamabo? It irked her. As a professional information gatherer, the idea that somebody could just evade her altogether was super fucky. Not at all fun, either. "Could be a diversion. Head out with those two, would you? I want somebody keeping an eye on them for a while."

Her cousin whistled lowly. "Three won't be happy." Understatement of the century right there... Sephahlos knew that Three valued her privacy like a dragon valued their gold, but...

"If she's not happy, she's _alive,"_ Callie replied simply. She opened the window and flashed the bug to the darkness. Then she crushed it to dust in her bare palm and blew the dust out into the night. Something in the darkness let out a low cackle, and then vanished off into the night. Fuck, the old woman had been _that_ close...?

Marie yawned, and slipped her Charger back into her ID Mass. "Got it. Make sure to tell Gramps about this."

Ugh. Really? "You're making ME do that?!" She didn't want to know ANYTHING about how Gramps knew that woman. Most times an old lady knew Gramps, it ended up being something Callie wanted to scrub from her brain. Why were old people so Awful? "You're a jerk, and I'm going to switch all the labels on your shampoos around later."

"Fiend. Back in a bit."

Callie sighed as her cousin left out the door. Idly, Judd chuckled. "What's so funny, buster?"

Judd smiled a big grin with his weird kitty face. "I've found as of late that games are so much more fun when you cheat." And then he strutted off into the bathroom, probably to curl up in the sink like some weirdass loaf of bread. 

A moment passed in dead silence. "What does that MEAN?!" Callie yelled to the empty apartment. She sighed and pulled out an old flip phone - secured against any form of wiretaps imaginable. Time to tell Gramps, huh? She hit the speed dial and walked outside as she waited for the tone. Two Superjumps later, she was high in the air and away from any audio devices that might be spying. Come on, pick up Gramps...

Click. "I'm busy, Agent One." Ooooh, that was his Captain voice. Something was definitely up. "This had better be good."

She threw on her best Agent voice and cleared her throat. "Captain, Agents Three and Eight have discovered that the substances from Kamabo have made them sick. It's potentially life-threatening."

There was no response. But that silence... Oh, that _silence_. It was the sort of silence that preceded a murderous rampage. "Explain."

Ohhhh shit, he was mad. "I'm not sure, exactly. Agent Three talked to Judd, and then apparently figured something out with Agent Eight. They seem to be convinced that the two of them are dying somehow." She paused. "Also, I've found evidence that Agent Two and I are being bugged. We need to comb the entire apartment."

An old swear escaped from the Captain's mouth. It wasn't one Callie recognized - it was solid and harsh, unlike most Inkling swears. It sounded, from what little she knew of the language, distinctly Human. "Was it Granny Burnes?"

"I think so. I heard cackling."

The Captain hummed. "So Granny Burnes is spying on us, is she?" A pause. "Good."

Wait, _what?_ But that old woman was-- "Captain, why is that--"

"Focus on Kamabo. We need to shut them down first, and there are potential _innocents_ being at risk here. Leave her to me, and lead the Splatoon."

Callie let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. "Of course, Captain. Do we have a timeframe as to when we can get to work dealing with them yet?"

Her grandfather audibly grinned. He answered. It made Callie grin too.

_\---_

Right outside the blackout area, Louie's was a terrifying aesthetic fusion of local family diner, foreign specialty restaurant, trendy hipster bar, low-class pub, and shitty fast food chain all wrapped up into one nightmarish package. It was like dunking your head into a bucket of water, was the difference between inside and outside.

Shit was downright unnerving. Three suspected some kind of faustian bargain, potentially with the dark ones that slumbered below creation.

"I want a New Dolphin-size Fishmonger Delights, a Shrimp Garlic, a Fully Loaded Tofu," Eight rattled off, staring a poor cashier down with eyes that could kill better men. "One Simply Cheese, a Margherita, a New Dolphin Vegetarian, two Cheesy Garlic Breads, a box of Mini Dutch Pancakes, and four Chocolate Lava Cakes."

The poor cashier stared in terror. "B-But I don't know if we have that much..." Three idly pulled a Roller from her ID Mass. No particular reason. "Okay! Okay, I'll put your order in! And it'll be ready to go!" And then the cashier bolted. Kinda presumptuous that they were making the order to go rather than to eat in, honestly...

The few customers in the place stared like Eight was crazy. To be fair, most people usually didn't order six pizzas at the store, they ordered over the phone. Like, who wanted to carry six boxes of pizza around? But still, they were being shitheels. Hopefully, that'd be enough food to make this work... Hopefully.

"Damn it, you two! How the fuck are you both so fast?!" Marie gasped, stumbling through the door. Honestly, Three was more interested in how she'd caught up with them so fast in her weirdass kimono outfit. "I mean it! I know you're both freaks of nature, but come on!"

"Parkour!" Eight chirped. She did a backflip on the spot, which was fucking Cool. "Plus we were racing each other."

Three rolled her eyes. "Sure, of course. You _call_ it a race, but I won by a mile."

"I keep telling you, you're _allowed_ to be _wrong,_" Eight said in a weirdly fascinating mixture of gentle smugness, patting Three on the cheek. Grrrr... Three totally won that! She'd gotten there a whole second ahead of Eight! "Three fell a looot, I had to slow down because she was floundering about like a baby."

"At least I wasn't posturing about like a bloody galah," Three muttered. And shit, her accent had slipped for a second there. "Look at me, I'm Eight, doin' a topsy-turv'!"

The smile on her face was just soft enough to not be irritating. "It's called showmanship, Three, and I know you're jealous about not having any." Only a little bit. Eight was really good at doing flips and handstands compared to Three.

Marie groaned loudly. Wow, so this was what it was like to be on the other end of these sorts of conversations... It made Three feel so **POWERFUL**. Like a GOD REBORN. "Guys. Could you drop the flirting--"

_"FLirTInG?!"_ Three choked out, suddenly on the defensive.

"BLUH?! Who's Flirting Not Us That's Silly Why Would You Even Think That?!" Eight blurted out rapidly.

Marie gave them both a look like she thought they were fucking morons. "--And just tell me why the fuck you started needing to get some pizza from Louie's and then sprinted out the door? Seriously, I'm worried."

Well. That was simple. Eight cleared her throat and visibly focused the blush off her face. "We compared notes on the way here and figured out the side effects of the goop that Kamabo touched us with." She paused. "Keep in mind, most of this is mostly educated guesses."

"It's not actually hurting us," Three explained. "Not in any way you could attribute to the _goop_, anyway. What it's done is just made the usual regenerative abilities we have go into overdrive."

"Which had a knock-on effect to the rest of our body," Eight continued. "Which means things like callouses or scars are fading because our body is literally just healing that fast."

Three nodded. "Theoretically, every Inkling and Octoling is capable of that level of healing, but only when we're submerged inside Ink. It's like an emergency button, you can only use it when you're in danger."

Eight followed up. "But what the goop did to us is _unlock_ that, we think. We're just permanently in that state now. But... That sort of constant healing power requires energy. _Lots_ of it."

_\---_

_"Agent Burnes, I've gotten a message from R&D Team 4."_

Hm. It'd been almost a week. It hadn't taken nearly this long for analysis of other materials they'd gotten their hands on... What made those samples she sent them so special?

She glanced at the cameras watching each Agent. One had pulled a vanishing act, Two Three and Eight had entered somewhere with not enough windows to keep an eye on them, Four was apparently researching something on her computer, Craig was still glaring at Octavio, and their various allies were all asleep. Nothing major happening, it seemed.

"Very well then, my dear! Please, deliver it to me! I always do love to hear your voice." Like a songbird, that woman. Granny loved to hear from her.

The eyeroll was audible._ "We are working, Agent Burnes. Save the flirtations for off the clock."_ Oh, Granny would. "_In any case, they've discovered exactly what the fluid you delivered was. Apparently it's something they're calling a 'Genetic Stabilizer'."_

Interesting. She could think of a few uses for those. "What does it do?"

The sound of shuffling paper came across the line._ "Supposedly, it repairs DNA and fixes abnormalities. I'm skipping a lot of subtleties, but the summary is that it brings you closer to what could be considered physically and mentally optimal."_

That... Could mean a lot of things. "Optimal how, exactly?" Some of them unpleasant. She didn't want 'optimal' to mean 'not Octarian'. Because if it was, it could be considered a _bioweapon_...

_"It's hard to say, there seem to be a number of effects."_ Lola flicked through the papers again. _"In general though, it seems to be some kind of super soldier serum. It increases regenerative capability in order to heal injuries and genetic disorders, like Thermochromism or Tryptophase."_ Really? That powerful?

On the Surface, people with stuff like that could spend _at least_ a quarter of their lives suffering those sorts of diseases, and even if they recovered, it was almost _certain_ any children those people had would also suffer from it. "What, it can just fix those? Like, just wait and it'll sort itself out?" Because if so, that was a damn wonderdrug.

_"They haven't done any testing on actual people yet, but yes, they believe so."_ Hot damn. Granny was almost impressed... But where the hell had Three gotten her hands on the stuff? Seemed too good to be true._ "And that's not all. It also seems to reduce the chance of bodily instability, like forcibly regulating blood pressure to prevent heart attacks or maintaining body temperature to prevent pneumonia."_

What the fuck? "Lola, I love you, but you better tell me this has some kind of side effect. From where I'm sitting, it's the answer to a damn lot of problems." Disease under Mount Nantai usually meant somebody died, or a Dome was cut off from the rest of the network until the sickness burned itself out with nobody left to infect. If this stuff could fix_ that..._

_"There is one side effect,"_ Lola said slowly._ "And unless you knew about it, there's every chance you'd just pass out and not wake up."_

Now that was interesting. Granny leaned forward. "And what might that be?"

_\---_

Marie was quiet for a moment. She was mentally workshopping what she'd been told, that much was obvious just by looking at her. "You're using up more energy than you're taking in. That's why you two are getting pizza!" Aaand there it was. "You're planning to fill up on calories so you can reverse that process!"

Eight clapped merrily. "Bingo! Three points to Miss Marie!" She gave a flashy grin before settling back down. "Speaking frankly, we aren't dying of anything fancy. We're dying of _starvation."_

Silence. "Fucking what?!" Marie yelled. "I literally just watched you two eat enough snacks to feed four people! Not ten minutes ago! How the fuck are you both starving to death?!"

Three sighed. "Because that's the _actual_ negative side effect of the goop." It was basically the only logical explanation for how they could eat all the food they'd had this week. Hell, Three had been cooking meals good for a family of five, and they'd been splitting them between each other! "We think our metabolisms are breaking food down to energy and nutrients as fast as we can _eat_ them." 

Eight nodded. "Right. I've eaten my bodyweight in food multiple times this week, and then gone for seconds just a couple hours later." She shrugged. "I honestly can't think of what else this could possibly be."

There was a pause as Marie did her own mental calculations. "Shit."

"Yeah," Eight agreed quietly. Her eyes went bright a second later with intense madness and glee. "On the bright side though, that means I can eat all the food I want! Oooh, all this pizza is going to be so gooood!" She squealed excitedly.

"I'll give you my choc lava cake if you let me have more garlic bread," Three bartered.

Eight nodded firmly. "Bargain accepted!" A deranged giggle ripped out of her throat. Honestly, the day Three started to teach her how to cook was the day Three was permanently booted out of the kitchen. "Yum!"

"I thought you hated chocolate," Three asked.

"Oh, I do. It's my least favourite food," Eight admitted. "But it's _still_ tastier than nutrition blocks. Anything is tastier than nutrition blocks." Honestly, Three still wanted to know what the fuck those were just so she had a comparison point.

Marie shook her head. "The speed you guys can get off a serious topic like that astounds me."

Eventually, the poor guy working the cash register pushed a mountain of boxes over to Eight. They had a generally terrified look on their face, and sort of looked like they never wanted to see anybody from this particular group of customers again. Honestly, if Three had her way, they'd only be eating actual quality calorie-intensive meals. Like stuff from McDarters.

God, she wanted some fries right now.

On their way out the door - which Marie had to hold open because some of the boxes were too wide to fit through it without the door being fully extended - their phones began to beep loudly. Shit, Three knew that tone. That exact rapid-sequence beeping, like an SOS message played on a telegraph from a hundred years ago.

She balanced the pizza boxes on one arm and pulled out her phone. A text had been sent, from an address that Three was oh so familiar with. It'd been the address that called her for most of the missions she'd taken that first year, and the one she'd come to associate with emergencies and immediate need for action.

**The Captain - 6:47 PM**  
Operation Starts At 0900. Octo Valley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME: THE END OF ACT ONE - PALE SUMMER MOONLIGHT.


End file.
